sugar biscuit in the darkness of the cellar?
I must take scrutiny, next time I visit.
Jean Brash. The woman is untouched. Like a picture in a frame.
But I bear the scars of every murderous crime I have set my seal across. They sear me. Old yapping ghosts.
Scars of body and soul.
A curious innocence in my heart yearns for redemption.
There is a wild energy prowling in the city. Young. Dangerous. A roving, vagabond energy. The devil is on the loose and who knows what flavours he will throw in the pot?
As usual I am in the middle but I feel the ground shaky as if the centre lacks cohesion.
Oh to be young again. What a foolish thought.
McLevy carefully blotted this guddle of half-baked insights and closed the book.
A noise from the streets below brought him to the window and he looked from his attic room over the black slates drenched by the slant rain of May, down at the torches flickering in the distance
by the harbour.
A youthful reckless energy. Hazardous to itself and other folk or was that just the opinion of an old man whose voice echoed in the fumbling darkness?
Ach tae hell with it. He defiantly poured some tarry dregs from his fire-scorched coffee pot into the mug and let the humid tincture trickle through tombstone teeth as the enamel rim brushed
annoyingly against the stalwart bristle of his moustache.
But there was scant doubt. Heart or no heart, pain or no pain – the devil had come to town.
What mask was he wearing?
Chapter 3
Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman what of the night?
The Watchman said,
The morning cometh, and also the night.
Isaiah, ch21, v11.
The Bible
A more piratical hirsute adornment under a very different nose, long and finely shaped, sifted the fumes of nicotine through its filaments as the owner of both neb and fusker
gazed thoughtfully out at the respectable street below.
Heriot Row was a fine example of rectitude rewarded; it may have led at one end to the slightly suggestive curves of Abercrombie Place but of itself was straight as a die.
His father would have approved, no doubt still did approve, lying himself undeviating in the coffin, hands folded, good book closed for the journey, cold white face arranged so that demonic
senility had left no trail.
An empty space.
Thomas Stevenson, father of the miscreant Robert Louis, was waiting for his burial in some days’ time.
Patience father. It will come. And I shall see to it. A splendid affair. No expense spared. Clouds of glory.
Stevenson sucked a long draft of smoke deep into his waiting lungs, a blessing they still functioned to purpose, and held it close like a lover. It crept into the crevices of his bony
shipwrecked chest, calming the nerves, soothing the feelings, until released with a whoosh.
Leaving behind?
Another empty space, my friend.
He tapped the cigarette ash off into his palm, regarded the tiny mound gravely, then blew it away towards nowhere.
The whole house was asleep, thank God; his wife Fanny no doubt engaged in phantom operatic adventures provoked by her instinctual organs; his mother Margaret hopefully not actually slumbering in
widow’s weeds, though she had taken to mourning like a duck to water, slept the righteous sleep; and Lloyd, Fanny’s son but not his, would be snoring like a log.
Like a log.
Good boy. A consecration if he but knew it. Sleep.
And Robert Louis? The famous Robert Louis? Left with and by himself, which, to tell truth, was no great hardship.
Peace to torture himself with guilty imaginings, amuse same with the observed traits of humankind, or bear witness to the wellspring whence the strange beings that peopled his tales of adventure
and woe issued forth, unbidden, at times most terrifying, but never unwelcome.
From the depths they arose and to the depths they descended.
All grist to the mill.
He sucked once more upon his self-rolled,
Papier Persan
, tobacco conduit to the stars and murmured in the half-light.
Come lend me an attentive ear,
A
I must take scrutiny, next time I visit.
Jean Brash. The woman is untouched. Like a picture in a frame.
But I bear the scars of every murderous crime I have set my seal across. They sear me. Old yapping ghosts.
Scars of body and soul.
A curious innocence in my heart yearns for redemption.
There is a wild energy prowling in the city. Young. Dangerous. A roving, vagabond energy. The devil is on the loose and who knows what flavours he will throw in the pot?
As usual I am in the middle but I feel the ground shaky as if the centre lacks cohesion.
Oh to be young again. What a foolish thought.
McLevy carefully blotted this guddle of half-baked insights and closed the book.
A noise from the streets below brought him to the window and he looked from his attic room over the black slates drenched by the slant rain of May, down at the torches flickering in the distance
by the harbour.
A youthful reckless energy. Hazardous to itself and other folk or was that just the opinion of an old man whose voice echoed in the fumbling darkness?
Ach tae hell with it. He defiantly poured some tarry dregs from his fire-scorched coffee pot into the mug and let the humid tincture trickle through tombstone teeth as the enamel rim brushed
annoyingly against the stalwart bristle of his moustache.
But there was scant doubt. Heart or no heart, pain or no pain – the devil had come to town.
What mask was he wearing?
Chapter 3
Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman what of the night?
The Watchman said,
The morning cometh, and also the night.
Isaiah, ch21, v11.
The Bible
A more piratical hirsute adornment under a very different nose, long and finely shaped, sifted the fumes of nicotine through its filaments as the owner of both neb and fusker
gazed thoughtfully out at the respectable street below.
Heriot Row was a fine example of rectitude rewarded; it may have led at one end to the slightly suggestive curves of Abercrombie Place but of itself was straight as a die.
His father would have approved, no doubt still did approve, lying himself undeviating in the coffin, hands folded, good book closed for the journey, cold white face arranged so that demonic
senility had left no trail.
An empty space.
Thomas Stevenson, father of the miscreant Robert Louis, was waiting for his burial in some days’ time.
Patience father. It will come. And I shall see to it. A splendid affair. No expense spared. Clouds of glory.
Stevenson sucked a long draft of smoke deep into his waiting lungs, a blessing they still functioned to purpose, and held it close like a lover. It crept into the crevices of his bony
shipwrecked chest, calming the nerves, soothing the feelings, until released with a whoosh.
Leaving behind?
Another empty space, my friend.
He tapped the cigarette ash off into his palm, regarded the tiny mound gravely, then blew it away towards nowhere.
The whole house was asleep, thank God; his wife Fanny no doubt engaged in phantom operatic adventures provoked by her instinctual organs; his mother Margaret hopefully not actually slumbering in
widow’s weeds, though she had taken to mourning like a duck to water, slept the righteous sleep; and Lloyd, Fanny’s son but not his, would be snoring like a log.
Like a log.
Good boy. A consecration if he but knew it. Sleep.
And Robert Louis? The famous Robert Louis? Left with and by himself, which, to tell truth, was no great hardship.
Peace to torture himself with guilty imaginings, amuse same with the observed traits of humankind, or bear witness to the wellspring whence the strange beings that peopled his tales of adventure
and woe issued forth, unbidden, at times most terrifying, but never unwelcome.
From the depths they arose and to the depths they descended.
All grist to the mill.
He sucked once more upon his self-rolled,
Papier Persan
, tobacco conduit to the stars and murmured in the half-light.
Come lend me an attentive ear,
A
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